Goin' to ground Wink
The earth is your friend
As the biker's thoughts swirled through his own, he found himself making a connection he had never expected. Kevin's desperate bid to save his mother found an echo in Taipan's life, but this girl was young and beautiful and dressed in white. She was the reason beyond all reason, the one saving grace, the one driving need. Lying in the embrace of the earth, Kevin thought he felt the planet quake with the intensity of Taipan's love for his sister.
FORTY-NINE
Reece stood in the kitchen, washing down painkillers with rum. The rogue bitch had clocked him a beauty. If he'd been mortal, truly mortal, the blow would've killed him. But the laugh was on her, right?
Boom-crash.
Maximilian von Schiller wasn't laughing. The Big V's rant crackled from the telephone Mira held at a distance, as though he might reach down the line and rip her brain out through her ear.
Felicity leaned against the door jamb. She'd been disappointed to have missed the battle and now she was doing her damndest to ignore the body still leaking blood on the floor. The light from the kerosene lamp on the bench softened her features. She gave him a raised-eyebrow look as Maximilian hit a high note. The gesture made him feel so very old.
Mira clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, 'He loved his helicopter. I have to buy him a new one.' She rolled her eyes and Reece and Felicity shared a conspiratorial grin, but they both knew the shit was dripping from the fan. Mira hung up and walked over to Reece. 'Well, that went well. Pour me one of those.' She swilled the rum, spat it into the sink, leaving a pink tinge. Not his, thankfully, and he hadn't been game to ask her for a top-up. He'd have to rely on paracetamol to fix his aches.
'Now, where was I? Oh, yes.' She'd been interrogating a wounded red-eye when Maximilian had rung; she'd killed the hippie through distraction or irritation, but not before she'd found something in his lifestream. Mira scribbled an address on a notebook. 'Send a squad to check this place. The nest. Near Stonehenge.' She gave Reece a smile.
'We don't have a full squad, Strigoi.'
'Then send someone, Reece. I need to find Mother!' She stood, locked in desperation and fury, the change of mood so sudden and dangerous that Reece dared only nod and say, 'Of course.'
'Is there any good news?' Mira asked.
'I just got here with the swag from the mechanic's car,' Felicity said. 'Nothing in it to suggest where Dani- where Dee might be hiding.'
'Get the judas or someone to get rid of the grease monkey's gear. No trace. And this, too.' She kicked the body on the floor. 'Reece?'
'We still have Matheson's mother, though she's in rough shape. Took two to the chest. The Night Riders have been largely eradicated, but it's cost us. Also, we've lost an outrider during the search outside the fence - dead, bike stolen.'
'So at least one got out, other than the two in the panel van. The grease monkey?'
'Haven't found his body yet.'
Mira took a pendant from her pocket and dangled it in front of her, then turned around so Felicity could tie it at her neck. 'You won't. He's still alive, I'm certain of it. I can't get a lock, though. We've got no idea where he might be headed. Unless - hit me again.'
Reece poured her another shot. She swallowed this one, and tasted it for a long time, nodding to herself. A slow grin twisted her tight lips.
'Is there a plan?' he prodded eventually.
'Oh, yes. Our lord and master wants us back in 'Bane, as fast as we can drive. Us and all our men.' She snorted. 'With a kiss on Jasmine's arse on the way out, for all the trouble we've caused.'
'She can't stay here, surely?' Felicity said. 'Someone must've noticed all this kerfuffle.'
'Like who? Anyway, it's Jasmine's choice,' Mira said. 'We're footing the costs. You're staying here, my dear, to oversee the grand kiss-and-make up.'
Felicity looked away in a huff.
'Trust me, you're better off. My advice would be to make the clean-up take as long as you can, certainly till the dust has settled back at Schloss Unhappy. You'll probably end up being promoted. God knows there's enough vacancies.'
'I'll make a start now,' Felicity said. 'Make sure Smithy's hunt for Matheson doesn't come this way. I'm meeting him at the Commodore once the tow truck from Nancy has arrived.'
'Nancy? What's that?'
'En-Cee,' she said. 'As in North Collinsvale. The nearest shithole to this one. Barlow's Siding seems to have lost its only garage.'
'"Nancy",' Reece said. 'You going native on us, Flick?'
'Don't call me that. And not bloody likely. I haven't heard a tune more recent than 1960 since I got here.'
'Get yourself a player,' Mira said. 'And stay in touch.' The girl left and Mira turned to Reece. 'Gets into your blood, doesn't she?'
He shrugged.
'Give the men their marching orders while I make nice with the lady of the house. Keep a car for you and me.'
'Just us?' He tried not to let his depression show. It was going to be a long trip without a relief driver. Mira didn't drive. She'd done pretty well at keeping herself updated, but that skill set was one she hadn't mastered. Word was, Maximilian couldn't even use a smart phone, let alone an ATM. And they fancied themselves the top of the food chain.
'Don't be like that, Reece. Vater said we had to go home but he didn't say which route to take.' She fingered the pendant dangling above her breasts. 'You and I will take a small detour. We should be able to get there by dawn.'
'By dawn?' He checked his watch. 'How far away is this place?'
'Not that far. This one's personal; just you and me. Of course, if that makes you uneasy, I could take Flick.'
'Where are we going, Strigoi? What should I expect?'
'Pack a full kit and a good pair of hiking shoes. There's a gorge I want to check out.'
FIFTY
The earth grew quiet. No explosions. No voices. No footfalls. How much time had passed, Kevin had no idea. It could've been centuries. It could've been seconds. But he couldn't stay. Up there, the enemy had his mother, and Acacia and Taipan and everyone - everyone - was gone. He was the night watchman - it was up to him.
He rose, quietly, dirt sloughing from him, his body aching where wounds remained tender, where hunger clawed at his hollow gut. Cool night air wrapped around him, the ground at his back, stars overhead. Silence; no birds, no licking of flame, no engines or conversation.
Wait.
A creak of timber. Muttered words. The spark of a lighter and the burst of cigarette smell. Not Taipan's noxious roll-your-owns, but the more cutting reek of a tailor-made penetrating the smell of blood and burnt timber, gunpowder and guts. He ignored the memory of another razed ruin, of emerging from the earth at the rear of the service station to find his world in ashes.
Someone was close by, and Kevin was lying on the ground, naked.
He rolled over to take a better look around. None of the spotlights were on; there were no lights at all, just moonlight masking the battlefield in shadows and, at the house, one window glowing orange. The people he'd heard were there, two of them, on the shattered remains of the veranda. He crawled into the garage and found the clothes he'd stashed; he'd be barefoot, but at least he wouldn't be creeping around with his old fella swinging in the wind.
Once he was dressed, he sneaked over to the house, then stood to squint through the gap between the veranda floor and bottom rail. Two guards stood at the front door - a man and woman in denim and checked shirts; him with a pump-action shotgun, her with a rifle. Bhagwan's myxos. That glow in the window - candle or lantern, he guessed. The front stairs looked as if someone had taken a giant sledge hammer to them: a jagged hole, timbers strewn everywhere, the roof sagging, the iron twisted out of shape.
'How much longer?' the woman asked.
'When she says,' the man answered, words a blue cloud driven by stress, the gun cradled in his arm as he took another suck on his flaring cigarette.
The woman reached to share a dr
ag. 'What if the neighbours heard the battle?'
'There's no-one within coo-ee.'
'Noise travels at night.'
'We're fine.' He took his cigarette back. 'Better than that lot, anyway.'
'Jesus,' she said. 'Couldn't they have buried them or something before they left?'
Kevin edged around so he could see the front yard.
Jesus indeed.
Hippie lay there, buried in a tangled pile of bodies; the man's sightless eyes stared at the sky from a face caked in ash, dirt and blood. Kevin recognised a Lions footy jersey thrown on the mound, but there was no body. All that remained of the front gate was a crater, lopsided posts and scattered rails. The Jeep was a smouldering beetle frame, the chopper little more than a dead bonfire stack outside the fence. The carcasses of cattle littered the area. Bizarrely, one grey-skinned bullock munched on grass in the far corner of the yard, oblivious to the destruction.
Kevin wondered how to get inside. Could he jump the rail and get to the guards before they gunned him down? A single shot would bring all manner of hell down on him. Would the rear be guarded? The windows? His gut churned, his vision blurring momentarily. The two guards radiated heat. Human heat. He could all but hear their hearts. He realised just how tired, how hurt, how hungry he was. He needed a distraction, just to buy him the time to get to them.
He sifted through Taipan's blood memories. He had the earth; what about the shadow walk? Taipan appearing on the road, and again in the hut where Mira had kept him trussed. Could he - yes, he could do that.
His heart beat to the rhythm of clap sticks, his breath was a didgeridoo. He felt a piece of himself break free and appear out by the Jeep. His doppelganger advanced slowly, jerkily. His vision doubled, making him reel: watching himself walk toward the house, watching himself watch himself walk toward the house.
Christ, but it was hard work.
Finally, he managed to separate the images, to focus on controlling the doppelganger without being in its head.
'Who's that?' the woman asked, the words jagged, the gun coming up to her shoulder.
'Markson?' the man suggested, taking a firm bite of his cigarette as he hefted the shotgun. He walked cautiously to the ruined stairs.
'What would he be doing back here?'
'Markson?' he called, but quietly, too quietly to carry the distance.
The woman walked to his side, rifle held in readiness. 'That isn't Markson. Jesus, who is that?'
Kevin lifted himself over the rail-
'Where'd he go?' the man asked, alarmed.
-hit the floor with a soft thunk of bare feet.
'He just vanished!' The woman, nearer to Kevin, gasped in confusion, and turned, acknowledging that sound, that movement behind her-
Kevin jabbed her in the chin. A crack. Her gun clattered on the floor as she tumbled off the veranda and thumped into the ground. The man stared at her. Kevin snatched the shotgun away, then slammed the butt into the man's face. The myxo landed hard on his arse up against a veranda post. Blood dribbled from his nose.
Kevin swayed, his mind floating from the effort of summoning the doppelganger, from the adrenalin rush, from the elation. He slumped to his knees in front of the myxo. The man's hand rose, feebly, lips forming a 'who' or perhaps 'what the fuck', but the words never came.
Kevin swallowed them.
He opened that man's throat and he feasted, barely tasting the fear and the pain and the anguish. Not caring that last night this man and that unconscious woman had been in love, planning how best to fully stock Jasmine's property, to milk the herd of its blood and transport it to Brisbane to feed the insatiable Von Schiller machine.
In the myxo's blood, Kevin found that Bhagwan had reportedly been dusted, that Mira and what remained of her troops had left an hour or more ago in separate vehicles, that this pair were in fact the last of Jasmine's retainers on the property. It was only their fear of Mira, of Jasmine, of age, that had kept them here.
And the blood told him what he most wanted to know - that Jasmine and Willa were still here; that the old girl was acting weird, sitting in the lounge with her living dead doll, the judas surfie and the boy's - Kevin's - mother.
Kevin managed to stop before he drained him.
He did not want the man's soul inside of him.
The hunger led him down to the woman. He opened her throat, too. When he was done, when he could move again, when his body was fat and warm and no longer aching, with his fangs retracted and the bloody smears cooling on his cheeks, he fought back the pressing need to piss, his bladder distended so tightly it felt as if it would burst like an over-ripe fig. But all he could think of was being caught beside these two bodies with his cock in his hand. He sneaked, sluggish but alert, with the shotgun to the front door to listen, and realised only then that he could've sealed those wounds he'd made. A little dab of his own blood would've done the job. But he didn't want to be in them, any more than he wanted them in him. He locked their phantasmal lives into rooms in his mind, as Danica had taught him; locked them away with his guilt and wondered which would fade faster.
Taipan would be proud; Kevin would figure out how he felt about it later. Once he'd rescued his mother. Once he'd put all this far behind him.
FIFTY-ONE
One wall of the lounge room gaped open, jagged edged, the ceiling fallen, the window shattered, the curtain a burnt rag. The piano lay at an angle, the stool kicked into a corner with a pile of broken, blackened wood. The stench of burnt things made the air thick; a dusty halo glimmered around the kerosene lantern sitting on the mantel.
He gasped as he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a chair. Sandals. Bare legs, the hem of board shorts. But he didn't dare move to get a clearer look. Not his mother, that was the main thing. The only thing.
His focus was on Jasmine Turner, seated in one of her antique armchairs. She wore some kind of mustard-coloured poncho. Willa stood by her side, dressed in jeans, work shirt and joggers. She wore a long, wide-bladed knife in a sheath on her hip and held a familiar rifle - his father's .243 from the Commodore. Another slice of his past stolen from him. She held it casually, barrel pointed at him, stock against her side. He had no doubt she'd loaded a round into the breach. At this range, it'd leave a hole in him the size of a cricket ball. Shotgun versus rifle: he favoured the pump-action, but she had the drop on him. And then there was Jasmine. Let it play, he decided, until he knew the score.
'The Strigoi wouldn't wait,' Jasmine said by way of greeting. She made Mira's title sound like something unpleasant; fair enough. 'Couldn't wait. She wouldn't say where she was going. She did say you were still alive.'
'How could she know - ah.' His pendant. He was back to square one, Mira having unrestricted access to him once again.
'I didn't think you'd leave,' Jasmine continued as though he hadn't spoken. 'Not while she was still here.' She pointed to a couch. A lump lay stretched out under a blanket. He walked around so he could see past the couch's obscuring arm, and recognised the pale face framed by mussed hair. His mother, silent and still. He ran to her, folded to his knees on the timber floor at her side, uncaring of Willa tracking him as he dropped the shotgun by his side.
'Family - I know its pull. Stronger than gravity.' A hand at Willa's elbow. The girl kept the rifle trained on him. 'Where might our Christopher be, do you think?' Jasmine asked.
He looked at her, then at Willa. Held her gaze. 'Taipan's dead,' he told them. 'The chopper-'
Jasmine waved away his words as though erasing something written on a blackboard. 'You are of his blood, and he is of mine. We would both know if he had been destroyed, and we both know that he has not. So, son of my son - where would he be?'
He felt again Taipan's love, his implicit trust even after her betrayal, and something in him broke. Maybe it was the fact his mother lay there dead, and he hadn't realised it. Surely part of him should have felt it, that moment when she'd gone? Why should he be able to sense Taipan's passing and not hers?<
br />
We'll be here for you. Always.
Always.
'He's at the gorge if he's anywhere,' Kevin said.
'Gorge?' Jasmine looked worried. 'Not Carnarvon, it's huge.'
'No,' Willa said. 'Not that far east; just a couple of hours from here. I know the place. From this side, you can only get in by foot. There are rock pools, palm trees, caves; I've never been there, but I know it. We both do. I'm right, aren't I?'
Kevin shrugged. But he knew it, too, her description conjuring vague impressions from deep in Taipan's lifestream.
'Well, this will be interesting.' Jasmine stood, elegant but quick, and for a split second he thought he had made a big mistake, that she was about to kill him, but all she did was adjust her serape. Under it, she was dressed for travelling in slacks, long-sleeved blouse and rugged shoes. 'We'll leave you to your farewells. We won't be back. I have no desire to explain all this to anyone.'
'All of this, because of a brother's love for his sister,' Kevin said.
Willa grimaced.
Jasmine gave the slightest shake of her head. 'Love should not be confused with obsession.' She turned to Willa. 'Bring the car around, my dear. We have a drive ahead of us, but we should be able to make it before dawn if we don't tarry.'
'What about him?'
'I don't think the young man will trouble us. He has his own family issues to deal with.'
'I don't trust-'
'Leave the firearm. Bring the car around, there's a good girl.'
Willa hesitated.
'We have no need of such base technologies,' Jasmine said. 'Not where we're going. I've never liked them. Dishonourable things; they cheapen us.'
Willa yanked the bolt open with an angry gesture. The bullet clanked on the floor and rolled away. She dropped the magazine and threw it onto the jumbled mess of the veranda, then extracted the bolt and left it on the mantel where a long, thin stake with a blackened tip was the only adornment. She propped the rifle in the corner, careful to avoid the body on the floor.
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